User:HarrisonGale84/Pierre Cholenec

= Pierre Cholenec = Pierre Cholenec (June 29, 1641 – October 30, 1723) was a French Jesuit missionary and biographer in New France. He administered to First Nations in present-day Canada, particularly at the village of Kahnawake south of Montreal. He served as superior of the Jesuit residence in Montréal.

Early life and education
Cholenec was born in the Diocese of Saint-Pol-de-Léon, Finistère, in the west of Brittany. He attended Catholic schools.

After completing his education in seminary, Cholenec entered the Society of Jesus in Paris, 8 October 1659 at the age of eighteen. He taught in the colleges of Moulins, Allier and Eu, Seine-Maritime from 1661 to 1670. Also during that period, he studied philosophy for three years at Collège Henri IV in La Flèche, Sarthe. After four years more of theology study in Paris, Cholenec departed for Canada in August 1674. In Montreal he learned the Mohawk and Algonquian languages before starting to work with the natives.

Missionary
From 1683 to 1688 Father Cholenec performed mission work at Lorette, a Jesuit colony now L'Ancienne-Lorette, Quebec. For many years, Cholenec was stationed among the Praying Iroquois at St. Francis Xavier du Sault, a Jesuit mission village also known as Kahnawake, located south of Montreal along the St. Lawrence River. This is where Kateri Tekakwitha, a converted Mohawk woman, came in the fall of 1677. She became part of a group of women in the village who were very devout and regularly practiced mortification of the flesh. She died two years later. Cholenec wrote multiple letters regarding the Iroquois Mission at St. Francis Xavier du Sault, which are found in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents.

Father Cholenec completed an account of her life in 1696. It was published in the Lettres édifiantes (1781) and (1839). A translation is given in Kip, Jesuit Missions (New York, 1846). This is an abridgment of a more extended biography, which is preserved in the archives of the Jesuits in Montreal.

Kahnawake became a Mohawk reserve, as did Akwesasne, founded by Mohawk families upriver on the St. Lawrence in 1745.

Contribution to Kateri Tekakwitha's Canonization
Following the death of Kateri Tekakwitha in 1680, both Cholenec and another Jesuit Missionary Claude Chauchetiere came to believe she was a saint. Both Cholenec and Chauchetiere wrote of many extroirdinary circumstances after her passing, though they somewhat differ in their respective accounts. An excerpt from Cholenec reads:

"“This face, so marked and swarthy, suddenly changed about a quarter of an hour after her death, and became in a moment so beautiful and so white that I observed it immediately (for I was praying beside her) and cried out. . . . I admit openly that the first thought that came to me was that Catherine at that moment might have entered into heaven, reflecting in her chaste body a small ray of the glory of which her soul had taken possession.”"

- Pierre Cholenec

There was a disagreement between Cholenec and Chauchetiere regarding the location Tekakwitha was to be buried. Chauchetiere wanted her to be buried in the church, which was only allowed for the elites of Catholic Europe, but Cholenec instead allowed her to be buried in the cemetery. Not long after Tekakwitha's passing, Cholenec declared her "the most fervent" and wrote about a light that surrounded her when she engaged in mortification of the flesh. Two weeks after Tekakwitha's passing, Cholenec wrote a letter describing Tekakwitha's many virtues and pious nature. Cholenec also wrote multiple biographies (or more accurately, hagiographies) regarding Tekakwitha.

Later years
Cholenec was appointed as the superior of the Jesuit residence in Montreal. He died there.